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Lower than 24 hours after Donald Trump was elected the forty seventh president of the USA, social media customers started pushing two conflicting narratives to counsel election fraud.
One revived false claims by Trump that the 2020 vote was stolen from him and the opposite questioned how Vice President Kamala Harris might have acquired so many fewer votes in 2024 than President Joe Biden in 2020.
Each narratives hinge on a supposed 20 million vote hole between Harris and Biden.
Right here’s a more in-depth take a look at the information.
CLAIM: President Joe Biden received roughly 20 million extra votes within the 2020 election than Vice President Kamala Harris earned within the 2024 race, proving both that Trump has cheated his strategy to a second time period or that there was widespread fraud 4 years in the past.
THE FACTS: The claims are unfounded. Votes from Tuesday’s presidential election are nonetheless being counted, so any comparability with earlier races wouldn’t be correct. As well as, election officers and companies monitoring the vote have reported no vital points with Tuesday’s election. Claims of widespread fraud in 2020 have been debunked numerous occasions.
“As we now have stated repeatedly, our election infrastructure has by no means been safer and the election neighborhood by no means higher ready to ship protected, safe, free, and truthful elections for the American folks,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company Director Jen Easterly stated in a press release.
“That is what we noticed [on Tuesday] within the peaceable and safe train of democracy. Importantly, we now have no proof of any malicious exercise that had a fabric affect on the safety or integrity of our election infrastructure.”
A number of Pennsylvania officers, together with Gov. Josh Shapiro, stated that that they had not seen any indicators of dishonest and known as the election safe after Trump stated in a Fact Social submit Tuesday that there was “plenty of speaking about large CHEATING in Philadelphia.”
And but, posts circulated on-line claiming in any other case, receiving lots of of 1000’s of likes and shares.
“20 MILLION VOTES WERENT COUNTED,” reads one X submit. “I KNEW IT TRUMP CHEATED.”
One other X submit, which shared a bar graph of presidential election outcomes from 2012-2024, states: “If these numbers are correct, that is indicative of a stolen 2020 election. 20 million votes simply disappeared. In different phrases there have been probably 20 million fraudulent votes final cycle. That’s an insane quantity.”
The Democratic candidates in 2012 and 2016 each received practically 66 million votes, a bit lower than Harris’ present depend.
Harris had received about 67 million votes as of Wednesday afternoon, in comparison with the roughly 81 million Biden garnered in 2020 — a distinction of about 14 million. However that hole is lowering because the vote depend continues. No state has counted 100% of its ballots but.
Trump is thus far lagging behind his 2020 complete by roughly 2 million votes, however this hole can be lowering as extra votes are counted.
Regardless of persistent claims that Trump received the 2020 election, together with from Trump himself, there is no such thing as a proof that that is true.
Biden received the Electoral School with 306 votes to Trump’s 232, and the favored vote by greater than 7 million ballots. Many battleground states carried out recounts or thorough critiques of their outcomes, all of which confirmed Biden’s victory.
An exhaustive Related Press investigation in 2021 discovered fewer than 475 cases of confirmed voter fraud throughout six battleground states — nowhere close to the magnitude required to sway the result of the presidential election.
Trump was repeatedly suggested by members of his personal administration that there was no proof of widespread fraud. Quite a few authorized challenges alleging voter fraud pursued by the Trump marketing campaign and its backers had been heard and roundly rejected by dozens of courts on the state and federal stage, together with by judges whom Trump appointed.
The allegations now spreading about fraud within the 2024 race echo many baseless claims that emerged 4 years in the past.
Vice President Kamala Harris known as Trump on Wednesday afternoon to concede the race and congratulate him.
“We should respect the outcomes of this election,” she stated in her concession speech.
